St John’s Recreation Ground, Antigua. At 11.46am on 18 April 1994 – 30 years next week – Brian Lara pulls a Chris Lewis short ball to the legside boundary and cricketing history is written. Garfield Sobers’s record Test score of 365 runs had stood firm for 36 years, a “North Wall” of batsmanship seemingly insurmountable. That is until a 24-year-old Lara scaled and surpassed it in only his 16th Test.
The scenes and stories that followed have become indelible: the jubilant crowd spilling on to the pitch, Sir Garry strolling through them to anoint the new record holder and crown prince of West Indian batting, Lara kneeling to plant a kiss on the biscuit-coloured wicket. The off bail, unnoticed by all except the wicketkeeper, Jack Russell, resting just outside of its groove after Lara had grazed his own stumps while swatting Lewis away. “I remember the dilemma as if it was yesterday”, Russell recalls with a chuckle. “‘If it falls off I’m going to have to appeal, here.’ I don’t reckon I’d have made it off the island.”
